Killer gets life sentence in East El Paso cartel slaying

Defendant pleaded guilty in 2009 cartel-related slaying on East Side

Former Fort Bliss soldier Michael Jackson Apodaca stands with his attorney Edith Payan as he pleads guilty during a formal plea hearing in the 210th District court on Wednesday. Apodaca is the admitted shooter in the Mayb 2009 cartel-related hit on Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galena on Pony Trail Place. Apodaca has entered into a tentative plea agreement with prosecutors agreeing to plead guilty to murder in exchange for a lifetime prison sentence with parole is he truthfully testified against his co-defendants.

A former Fort Bliss soldier who admitted to shooting and killing a man in a 2009 cartel-related hit in East El Paso, was formally sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.Former Army Pfc. Michael Jackson Apodaca, 22, was sentenced during a hearing Thursday afternoon in the 210th District Court after prosecutors determined Apodaca testified truthfully against his best friend and co-defendant, Juan Gerardo Gracia Jr., during Gracia's trial earlier this year. Gracia was eventually acquitted by a jury of capital murder.

Apodaca, who will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years of his sentence, appeared at Thursday's hearing, clad in an orange and white striped El Paso County Jail jumpsuit. He declined to make a statement when asked by Judge Gonzalo Garcia.

During Apodaca's testimony, which spanned over two days during Gracia's trial, Apodaca chillingly described how he got out of a vehicle driven by co-defendant Christopher Duran, ran up to José Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana outside of the victim's home on Pony Trail Place, and shot Gonzalez-Galeana eight times.

"As I shot him, I was moving, then I ran out of rounds," Apodaca said during his testimony.

After the shooting, Apodaca said he then got into the vehicle with Duran and drove away. Apodaca said he called co-defendant Ruben Rodriguez-Dorado and told him, "I just did it," tossed an extra magazine out of the window and took the handgun apart.

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Rodriguez-Dorado pleaded guilty to a murder charge last month and was also sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors had previously sought the death penalty against Apodaca and Rodriguez-Dorado.

Earlier this month, Duran pleaded guilty to a murder charge and sentenced to 20 years in prison.Apodaca also testified Gracia told him in 2008 that Rodriguez-Dorado, who was a member of the Juárez cartel, was looking to hire someone to kill Gonzalez-Galeana, a fellow cartel member, and that he would pay Gracia and Apodaca $5,000 each. The reason for the slaying, Apodaca testified, was that Gonzalez-Galeana had become a government informant, had owed the cartel money and might have killed people in Juárez, although Apodaca didn't elaborate on whom Gonzalez-Galeana might have killed.

Prosecutors said during Gracia's trial that both Rodriguez-Dorado and Gonzalez-Galeana were informants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jesús Aguayo Salas, an alleged midlevel cartel lieutenant accused of ordering the murder, is thought to be in Mexico and has not been arrested.